ARBITRATION AND TOURISM: A FIELD TO EXPLORE One of the best known and most replicated theories on strategy was proposed by Porter15, who suggests a two-dimensional model: strategic advantage and strategic objective. Subsequently, Porter uses the dimensions of competitive advantage instead of the referred strategic advantage and strategic objective. Thus, Porter identifies three generic competitive strategies that can be followed by companies: leadership by cost; differentiation; and focus, whether on cost or differentiation. Companies that use a strategy focused on cost will try to be the cheapest producers in the industry. Those using a differentiation strategy will aim to differentiate their product from the competition, to enable charging a higher price. Mintzberg, on the other hand, proposes a typology of competitive strategies using the dimensions of differentiation strategies (e.g., price differentiation strategy; image differentiation strategy; differentiated support or support strategy; quality differentiation strategy; design differentiation strategy; and non-differentiation strategy), and scope strategies (e.g., non-segmentation strategy; segmentation strategy; niche strategy; and customization strategy). For Mintzberg, differentiation is thus a concept determined by supply, whereas scope is determined by demand. This author also proposes the commonly called five P’s theory of strategy, where he discusses the five dimensions of the concept: plan, pattern, positioning, ploy and perspective. 3.2 The differentiation approach The bet on arbitration in order to gain a possible competitive advantage takes us, in a clear and logical-deductive way, to the field of the so-called “generic strategies” and, within these, to the differentiation strategy. In fact, it is reasonably evident that the submission to arbitration of any disputes that may occur in a given contractual relationship between two or more players in the field of tourism, will never represent a classic strategy of product creation or prospection of new markets. Ansoff, with his matrix of four strategies, introduced important and decisive concepts in the field of business strategy. However, this strategic model, although decisive for the emergence of strategic conceptions, is relatively little comprehensive, leaving out important aspects of strategy design, primarily because it incorporates in the so-called “product development” a vast set of strategies that needed to be autonomised and conceptualised, in order to give them a greater and more accurate operationality. Aware of this problem, Porter 15 Porter,1980.
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